Article February 14, 1920 Issue

The Other Cheek

MAUD DREWRY

Awaking from sleep one morning a little boy said to his mother, "Why were you so mean to me in my dream? You were simply horrid." "Why, darling," she replied, "that was only a dream. I have been resting quietly by you all night." "Well," retorted he, with the simplicity of a child, "why did you get into my dream at all?" The mother laughed and then said, "Well, dearie, sometimes it does seem that people get into our dreams in the wrong way, but when we wake up we know it was never true."

The mother, a student of Christian Science, was consulted the following day by a fellow student who was struggling with a sense of resentment at a wrong and a great injustice done her by one whom she had protected and befriended for many years, and the bitterness of her feeling was accentuated by the deceit practiced, the wrong being discovered accidentally, as it would seem, after a long time. This woman, an earnest and loyal student of Christian Science, had detected at once the error of the resentment in her own thought and asked for help to turn it out, knowing better than to desire to cherish any thought of revenge or unkindness for the person who had tried to injure her. The little boy's mother remembered the child's question, and also Mrs. Eddy's words in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 188): "Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of mind;" and on page 250, "Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream?" She quoted these words to the young student and repeated the amusing words of the child, and the student was helped.

When adults awaken in the morning they do not bear resentment to those who "get into" their night dreams. They dismiss the dream instantly as not worth consideration. Why then should one who is awake to the truth, and recognizes himself and his brother as made in God's image and likeness, consent to entertain as fact even for a moment another's dream of sin, and add to the dreariness of this dream by expressing beliefs of resentment and bitterness? As one studies the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's wonderful books he wakens to a realization of what is meant by "the other" cheek, or a different cheek, not a cheek of the same sort that was smitten, for all that can ever be smitten or hurt is a mortal sense. The spiritual sense can never be touched by discord of any kind. "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness," says the psalmist.

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